


this glass house is burning down

by ghosthunter



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Coming Out, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 13:58:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15144602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: If you’re not gonna wear your own number, might as well wear your boyfriend’s





	this glass house is burning down

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by a kinkmeme prompt, and it sort of ticks the boxes. it's all fluff and i'm not sorry. there were a lot of pairings that were thrown my way by the gc to be in here, and... some of them in here and some got left out.
> 
> as always, thanks to jarka for beta. ur a real bro, bro.

**i. pk the first**  
It was always an open secret that sometimes guys who were on the same team, who were hooking up, would wear each others’ clothes. No one ever questioned it, and no one ever talked about it. Ostensibly, the public doesn’t know what it indicates.

PK wears a Montreal Canadiens sweatshirt emblazoned with the number 27 in the Predators locker room after he’s traded. It’s a statement - it’s a massive statement, but one that maybe goes a bit astray from the point PK is trying to make.

“Are you not fully in on being a Predator?” someone asks him.

“Twenty-seven is Alex Galchenyuk,” someone else says.

“I’m just supporting my boy,” PK tells them. “Sometimes he doesn’t get the support he deserves up there, and I’m just here to make sure he gets that, even if I’m on a different team now. Being on a different team doesn’t mean that you’re not still bros.”

In turn, Alex posts selfies on Instagram wearing a PK shirsey, with a big grin. He looks happy, and spends his bye week in Nashville, even shows up at a Predators game wearing a Subban jersey, and a stupid hat he stole from PK’s closet that he can’t quite pull off.

What people don’t see is the two of them wrestling across PK’s sheets at night, laughing as they grapple for which of them is going to be in control. Alex lets PK win, lets PK press him into the mattress.

People don’t see it, but they set a new precedent in the league.

 

**ii. 8 7 2 8**  
“Hey Sid, that’s some new bling you have there - it’s not your number, though.”

“Are there any questions about hockey?”

Sidney won’t answer questions about it, no matter how many days in a row they ask him, because he’s always made a point not to talk about his personal life. So there’s a gold 28 that rests against the center of his chest. He lets it hang outside his undershirt, inviting them to ask anything they want, even though they should all know by now he’ll ignore it.

His team knows the truth, he’s endured the chirping about it in the locker room for ages. He’s a master at keeping things on the ice separate from things off the ice. Sometimes Claude is less good at it, and doesn’t talk to Sidney for days at a time if Sidney does something on the ice Claude sees as particularly egregious - though the days of Claude’s broken wrists are long forgiven - but Sidney knows that not everyone has the same temperament.

If Claude wore a big 87 on a chain, a match for Sidney’s, people would catch on too easily. Instead, he keeps a ring on a chain that hangs in the same space, just over his heart, Sid’s 87 etched on the inside.

He paces the floors of Sid’s house in Nova Scotia like they’re his own, teaches Sidney French that he’ll never need to use. Sometimes Sidney feels like they spent too many years hating each other that they could have spent loving each other.

One day, he thinks, he’ll stop dodging all the questions.

 

**iii. old friends new teams**  
TJ shows up at Jonny’s door after the playoffs are over, the same way he always does at the end of a season, and they prepare to spend three blissful weeks together in Canada. Jonny just has a little bit of a surprise for TJ this season.

It was a stupid idea, really, but Jonny has loved TJ for nearly ten years. Their friends and families know about them, their teammates know about them. TJ was terrified when he was traded from St. Louis to DC - not because of the distance, but because he was worried how a new team would take things. Turns out, the only thing he needed to worry about was the new expanse of distance that was between Chicago and DC.

They talk about it in abstracts, what they want to do one day when they’re retired. The kids they want to adopt together. The life they want to have.

“I got you something,” Jonny says, lacing their fingers together as they walk through his house, heading toward the bedroom. “Well, maybe I got me something.”

“Well, I like surprises,” TJ says easily, always ready to go with the flow. Jonny’s always liked that about him. TJ’s always been kind of a counterbalance to how uptight Jonny knows that he can be.

There’s a box on the bed. It’s plain cardboard - the kind of box that his mom gives sweaters in at Christmas. This box has a sweater in it, too. It’s a hockey sweater, one of Jonny’s specifically, a red home Blackhawks sweater with a number 19.

It’s the name on the back that’s different. TJ stares at him, confused, until he unfolds the sweater and catches sight of the name on the back. Instead of the regular Toews that would normally be there, it’s hyphenated. Oshie-Toews.

TJ looks up at Jonny, confused. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“I don’t just want to spend my life with you, Teej,” Jonny says. “I wanna marry you. I want your name on the back of my jersey, too.”

“Jon,” TJ says, and Jonny’s not really sure what TJ is going to say, only he almost looks like he’s going to start crying.

He tosses the sweater onto the bed and wraps his arms around Jonny.

“Marry me, T,” Jonny says. “When all this is said and done and I’m done playing hockey, you’re the one I want to go home to.”

TJ laughs, delighted. “Yes,” he says. “Obviously yes.”

 

**iv. youth**  
When Connor shows up to a presser wearing a Tucson Roadrunners t-shirt, he expects people to ask questions, the same way people used to when PK Subban wore Galchenyuk sweatshirts in the locker room. Connor himself expects to just deflect, the same way PK does.

Connor has never been good at lying.

But he’s standing there for his presser, wearing Dylan’s number on a Tucson t-shirt, and they say -

“You and Strome are good friends?”

And Connor says, “you could say that.”

“Is it weird to not wear you own number? Your number is very much a part of your identity as a player,” someone else says, which is weird, but Connor guesses that’s something he’s done to himself, really.

“If you’re not gonna wear your own number, might as well wear your boyfriend’s,” Connor says, and that’s the last word he can get in edgewise before the entire scrum devolves into people yelling.

Later, Dylan’s face fills the screen of Connor’s phone, and he is also yelling.

“I can’t believe you said that!” Dylan yells. Dylan is happy, and Connor is stressed out. Since he said what he said, he’s had to do nonstop meetings with PR. Congratulations, Mr. McDavid, your inability to lie to people has made you the first actually out player, instead of just being in a glass closet that nobody talks about.

“You’re okay with it, right?” Connor says. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first, it just kind of. I was going to make a joke, but then what I said came out instead and - stop laughing at me.”

“You’re so stupid and I love you so much,” Dylan says.

“I love you, too,” Connor says.

 

**v. congratulations**  
Connor McDavid is the first out player in the league, but he doesn’t stay the only one for long.

After that, it’s a flood of players who decide that they don’t feel like hiding anymore. Subban and Galchenyuk, who weren’t exactly hiding to begin with, and Giroux, who wanders around Sidney Crosby’s hometown like it means nothing, holding hands with Sid - even though Sid still says nothing.

Jonathan Toews nearly knocks someone over rushing onto the ice with the rest of TJ Oshie’s family when the Capitals win the Cup, and he kisses TJ in front of God and everybody.

In the Devils home opener against the Capitals, Zajac deliberately gets himself kicked out of the faceoff dot so that Marcus Johansson takes a faceoff against Evgeny Kuznetsov.

The names on the backs of their jerseys are swapped - “it’s too long hyphenated,” Marcus says to the media the first time someone asks him about wearing Kuznetsov as the name on his jersey. During the game, TJ gives Marcus a bump into the boards and tells him it’s for stealing TJ’s thunder, only TJ’s hyphenated name is gonna fit. Marcus steals the puck from him in retaliation.

The Capitals win, but both Kuzy and Marcus have assists. They pose together in the hallway outside the locker rooms, sweaty and still in their gear. Marcus is making a frowny face, and Kuzy is kissing him on the cheek.

Later in the season, they switch to the hyphenate. The letters are smaller than normal and stretch out onto the arms a bit, but it’s worth it.

Kuzy sends Connor McDavid a fruit basket, just because he can.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, leave a comment, or come chat with me on twitter @notedgoon. i promise you i'm just as #onbrand there as i am here.


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